Trouillot:
“Sunday afternoon was a ritual time for the Trouillot brothers. History was their alibi for expressing both their love and disagreements”
“Human beings participate in history both as actors and as narrators. […] History means both the facts of the matter and the narrative of those facts, both ‘what happened’ and ‘that which is said to have happened”
History, and thus archives, are inevitably biased. A product of human bias, historical documents are all on a spectrum of absolute truth to completely false. Even between two brothers with a passion for their national history, disagreements are found and delved into. This is an example of how even individuals who think in similar fashions can have disputed accounts of the past. The problem with archival validity arises as individuals are tasked with recording an event through a single perception. Yes, there must be a humanistic, perhaps story telling fashion approach to recording history. However, allowing a homogenous sample of individuals to dictate how any given event will be remembered provides ample potential for bias and thus untruthfulness on how different events, cultures, or data will be remembered.
Question: Is there any quantitative process for determining the validity of a given set of archives or individual record? Or would the lack of documents from those who did not write history make this effort useless?
Hey, I thought it was really interesting to bring up how individuals, and even closely related ones at that, are going to experience the world in different ways. In response to your question, I think it’s less important to try and determine the truth as the beginning and end of a historical argument, but rather, deciding why and to whom a certain account of event is valid. I struggle to feel like we can discount some accounts as “invalid” just because they aren’t factually correct, because clearly someone felt they were true or thought the events should be purported as such. In the case of archives and what is left there, I think it’s really important for us as scholars to do even more background research to decide what context caused counter-factual accounts of events or situations to gain traction or the semblance and reputation of truth.
Dear Students, Here’s a sample of a quote, comment, question discussion post:
Quote: “This book is about history and power. It deals with the many ways in which the production of historical narratives involves the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals who have unequal access to the means for such production…” (Trouillot, xxiii)
Comment: Trouillot shows that historical narratives are not neutral or objective, but that some groups have had more power to construct those histories and tell stories about the past. It was compelling to think about “how history works,” how it is produced, and who are the actors who build the historical narratives we hear, both inside and outside of academia (politicians, filmmakers, curators, authors, etc.). Some of this power to produce history lies in the archive—in assembly and retrieval of documents by archivists, in selecting and shaping the knowledge that we preserve and remember. Schwartz and Cook point out that it’s important to acknowledge the power in the archive, and Blouin and Rosenberg want to bridge the ‘archival divide’ between scholars and archivists.
Question: Could bridging the work of historians and archivists reveal some of these silences and inequalities in archives and in history? And what did Trouillot mean by the “two sides of historicity”?
Post by 10:00am tomorrow (Tuesday, January 9). And don’t forget to read and respond to your classmates’ posts before class!
Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook write: “If we so inquire into the function of archives in society, then we must deal with two intimately related, but separately conceived themes: ‘knowledge and the shaping of archives’ and ‘archives and the shaping of knowledge.’ Imbricated in these themes is the exercise of power – power over information and power of information institutions” (9)
I am intrigued by the article’s distinction between “knowledge and the shaping of archives” and “archives and the shaping of knowledge.” It seems to get at something deceivingly simple: what we know shapes what we remember, and what we remember shapes what we’ll later know. Working to understand what lies in a particular archival collection must entail an investigation not only of what exists within the collection but also what scholars–present and future–might take from it and how it shapes their work. With this, it becomes clear that knowledge is power. Knowledge is power when you possess the information, and knowledge is power when you use the information. This point within the article demonstrates the multifaceted approach that it seems must be taken in order to accurately make use of an archive.
The phrases “shaping of the archives” and “shaping of knowledge” seem to me to reach into the future. How should historians balance the historical nature of that which lies in the archive with the future-oriented nature of how archival material/collections might be construed in years to come?
“Some scholars claim that the fantasy has reached such significance for the West that it matters little whether it is based on facts. Does this mean the line between history and fiction is useless?” (Trouillot 8-9)
I found the effect that language has on history and the description of events by generations extremely interesting. It seems pretty problematic to say that just because other cultures did not share Western grammatical structures or the same access to technology that their history and heritage should be discredited. As mentioned in the text, there are stories that have been told so many time that eventually the validity does not matter. I must believe that much of what we consider today to be authentic historical accounts were influenced by individual’s bias, perceptions, and even their realities that differ from others who experienced or studied the exact same thing. If we see history as essentially storytelling, what is the significance of the truth when looking at historical events? Especially before the days of technology that can capture the true events of a moment, is it not individual’s perceptions of the events that characterize the events themselves. Ideally you would have available both personal accounts and the undisputable course of events, to juxtapose and paint a picture of not only what happened but how it felt. Are there any circumstances you can think of where perceptions may be more important than actual events?
In response to your question, which I think is an important question, I can think of a circumstance where the perception is more important than the actual event. For me this question makes me think of the Americas prior to 1492. Today there is solid evidence that the peoples of the Americas before the Europeans arrived were a advanced society. For example, the Inca, who lived in the Andes, had a very centralized/ advanced society that was capable of basically ordering its populace to build roads that baffle us today. However, regardless of these facts the perception that the Americas was filled with backwards peoples before the Europeans arrived prevails. Amazingly this perception has endured over the solid historically facts that prove it false. I have to chalk this perception prevailing over the facts because the perception is linked to a political motive/ ideology.
The distinction between “perceptions” and “actual events” that you bring up is really intriguing. Throughout these readings, I’ve been wondering if it ever really is possible to fully capture a historical event. Anything from the past that continues to be preserved is going to have the marks of the people/person who preserves it. Even with today’s technologies, I still don’t know if people can really capture an event as a whole–even with film there are different decisions being made about how to film (like the decisions that cinematographers make in filming movies) and even when footage is taken by someone who has just grabbed a camera, everything is still being seen, quite literally, from their lens. Newer technologies may bring new problems. Again going with the idea of film as a way to capture an event, the film itself may not be true (not to get into these debates, but think of UFO, Big Foot, or Loch Ness Monster photos). Ultimately everything we see is just what we perceive. Perceiving things that other people have perceived (as we do in history courses) makes another degree of separation from the event itself.
“Archives have always been about power, wether it is the power of the state, the church, the corporation, the family, the public, or the individual.” (Schwartz & Cook, 13)
The notion that archives, or more importantly the stories they can tell, generate power is fascinating. Its fascinating because power is usually thought of as force or ability to change something . Force, in the political sense, is usually the product the military. After all, it is military force that changes governments or conquerors new land.
However, as this quote illustrates, the force behind the military force is the story. Without the story, which is preserved/ fostered in the archives, there would be no motivation. The story is the most central element to mobilizing any force. For example, during World War II propaganda, which is a form of story, motivated men to fight. On the German side propaganda was distributed that painted the Russians as less than or sub human. That way the German solider would have no problem invading Russia and fighting. Without propaganda it would be next to impossible to mobilize anybody to fight.
The power of the story is not just limited to to global conflicts, but is relevant to own our everyday choices. After all, why did we all choose to go to Colby? I think it has a lot to do with story/ narrative we’ve been told.
My question is- what is the best way to resist the power of the archives/ the stories that come with?
I honed in on the use of power in this reading as well and I really thought your link to World War II propaganda was interesting. In response to your question, I think the best way to ‘resist the power of the archives’ is to, ironically, embrace all they have to offer. By taking into account all points of view of a given event, you’re able to develop a more whole representation of what really happened with less bias. This would, however, be impossible if archives were completely under control of a dominant force that restricted access to varying interpretations.
I think the “best way to resist the power of the archives/stories that come with”, as you said, is broadening access to information and promoting unbias education. The broader your source of information, the more information you have to formulate your own beliefs. Additionally, education is key to develop your skills to broaden your access to information and process that information. Hopefully, that would lead to a greater ability for a person to reject propaganda.
“Archives have always been about power, whether it is the power of the state, the church, the corporation, the family, the public, or the individual. Archives have the power to privilege and to marginalize. They can be a tool of hegemony; they can be a tool of resistance. They both reflect and constitute power relations. They are a product of society’s need for information, and the abundance and circulation of documents reflects the importance placed on information in society.” (Schwartz and Cook, p.13)
The conversation that Cook and Schwartz crafted about archives and their societal impact really stood out to me. Among their main talking points was power (as referenced in the title). The text begins by emphasizing the lack of power among archivists as viewed by the outside world, practically labeling them as simpletons. This position evolves though as the aspect of memory is introduced and linked to archives. It’s argued the contents of archives serve as evidence for our conceptions of historical events and phenomenons. With this in mind, it becomes clear that control of archives is control of public memory and therefore a very powerful institution.
Is the assertion that the archive is inherently powerful completely correct? Couldn’t you argue that the power comes from archivists and dominant cultures to control the archives?
“The historian begins to process the vestiges of the past into some new form of understanding, rarely giving any thought to the fact that the “vestiges” themselves—letters, memos, reports, all sorts of documents—have already been processed by archivists into what the scholar will hopefully think are interesting materials. The historian uses the materials to process historical information and understanding; the archivist processes the materials to allow this information and understanding to be ‘uncovered.’” (Bluin and Rosenberg 2)
While doing the reading, I found it to be compelling that there is a greater narrative of power in the archives, but something I find crucial to keep in mind is that there are decisions on the level of the individual, as well, and not all of them might be done with malicious intent or with the implicit purpose of concealing the histories of minorities and other marginalized groups. By the time we have access to an archive, there have already been large-scale decisions made to form and shape the collection, but also smaller decisions. Some of the pieces for Tuesday alluded to the fact that the researcher in a way depends on the archivist to find certain materials, and may depend on the archivist again to find related items. Processing information that this level will undoubtedly lead to gaps in knowledge or information, and to me, it is without malicious intent.
Along those same lines, I find I have some trouble reconciling where the line between power plays and general misfortune falls. As someone who focuses primarily on medieval history, I feel like I constantly face the fact that not much survives, and we have a finite amount of resources to study that period. Although I am sure a lot of preservation happened because certain groups had no power to create anything that could be preserved, and because groups in power decided some work was not worth preserving, I am struck by how many gaps there appear to be even in that body of work. We may only have seven letters of a correspondence that we know went on for years. Is this lack nefarious in 2018? I think it bears keeping in mind that there is a possibility for preservational mischief, but I guess now it just seems like windows in narratives is something we just have to take for granted.
To what extent can narratives be whole if we know there are either intentional or unintentional gaps in our bodies of literature and other documents? What place should an examination of the gaps in the archives have in our work?
Quote: “The problems of determining what belongs to the past multiply tenfold when the past is said to be collective” (Trouillot, 16).
Comment: Trouillot demonstrates the history is an imprecise practice in which historians often treat groups of people as monolithic. For example, historians will often mention things like the role of women or people of color during certain times in certain places. In a way, this theoretical framework dehumanizes the individual participants in history who each experience their own unique circumstances. Therefore, historians must make careful choices in how they communicate the history of groups of people. The way that people are grouped in contemporary historical academia is as much a reflection of modern society as it is a reflection of the past.
Question: Written documents are much easier to archive than orally-transmitted history. What methods—if any—do archivists use to preserve oral history?
Quote:
“English, of course, has no…grammatical rule assessing evidence.” (Trouillot, pg. 7)
Comment:
In this line (from which I omitted the word “such” for the sake of quotation), Trouillot reflects on the ability of certain languages’ grammatical structures to convey the verifiability of information as it pertains to the source of evidence. For instance, Tuyaca is a language endemic to Northwestern Brazil that uses grammatical evidentiality. In Tuyaca, a speaker would add either a suffix or a prefix (I forget which one) to a sentences’ primary verb so as to indicate how the information conveyed in that sentence was gathered or presented.
English speakers (and, for that matter, speakers of essentially all Indo-European languages) mainly use auxiliary verbs (e.g., he is a fast runner; he looks like a fast runner; she said that he is a fast runner; I think that he is a fast runner; I know that he is a fast runner) to tell others about how we know the ostensible truth behind what we say. The problem, obviously, is that these auxiliary verbs are not grammatically necessary. The Tuyaca equivalent of these auxiliary verbs, the aforementioned prefixes/suffixes, are generally mandatory. A speaker of Tuyaca would not say, “he is a fast runner.” He or she would be grammatically obligated to be more specific: Is there observable evidence that he runs quickly? Do you merely think that he runs quickly? Have you been told that he runs quickly?
The problem that Trouillot outlines stems from the fact that, unfortunately, fairly few professional historians and archivists speak evidentiary languages. A great deal of academia is conducted in romance languages, speakers of which are almost never obligated to specify the basis for their claim. This gives rise to the theory that day-to-day communication in Tuyaca is better informed than day-to-day communication in English due to the impossibility of omitting information in the former language. This obviously influences historiography greatly: A Tuyacan historiographer would be almost inherently more informative than a European historiographer by mere virtue of utilizing language that mandates a higher degree of specificity.
Question: Would there be any way to look into how texts written in evidentiary languages (if there are any) may be easier to corroborate and contextualize than texts written in Indo-European languages?
Hi Jonathan, I really like the point you make here. It is intriguing how Trouillot bring up this point of the differing grammatical structures of languages and their differing difficulties. If a specified evidentiary language is understood by a historian, then it would be easier to contextualize given that it is impossible to omit information in a more informative language. It would be interesting to see if there are any documented studies of historians who have come to at least a basic level of understanding of an evidentiary language in which this is the case.
Quote:
“Taken together, the on-going denial by archivists of their power over memory, the failure to explore the many factors that profoundly affect records before they come to the archives, and the continued assumptions by many users of archives that the records presented to them are not problematic, represent a prescription for sterility on both sides of the reference room desk.” (Schwartz & Cook, 2)
Comment:
Schwartz & Cook show several major flaws over how records are collected and referenced. In order to create a better archival system archivists must admit that they have substantial power over how an event will be interpreted. Although they may do their best to collect unbiased facts their own opinions will still influence what is collected and what is not. Records that do come to an archive may not be as reliable or neutral as they are presided. As many say “History is written by the victors.” To me this was really a wakeup call that we have grown up believing archives to be true, however we must learn to question not only articles from archives but the means by which they were collected and the archives themselves. It is the responsibility of both archivists and researchers to discern how credible a source is even if it is in an archive.
Question:
Why is there an “on-going denial by archivists of their power over memory,” if archives have always been related to power?
I’m interested in what you point out about the “on-going denial by archivists of their power over memory.” It makes me wonder: who do the archivists report to? Certainly everyone has a “boss” who sets their goals, the purpose of their work, and more. Is it really the archivists who have the power over memory? Or is it the institution of the archive itself and those who oversee it?
Quote: “The need for a different kind of credibility sets the historical narrative apart from fiction. This need is both contingent and necessary. It is contingent inasmuch as some narratives go back and forth over the line between fiction and history, while others occupy an undefined position that seems to deny the very existence of a line.” (Trouillot 8).
Trouillot argues that distinguishing the difference between fact and history is a difficult task due to the fact that historians are sometimes not able to see a story from multiple perspectives that would result in clarification. Historians have to be able to perform this important task in order to give a representation of the most accurate history; however, this cannot be defined as a “one size fits all” process. In each case, there is a wide range of information and types of information to pool from that a historian has to interpret and diagnose. Trouillot applies this thinking to the history of the Alamo in order to showcase how a cemetery for American Indians near the Alamo can possibly alter the full comprehensive history of the Alamo. This story surrounding the Indians begs the question of whether or not this was a true story of bravery, or if it was another story of the Indians losing their land to the more rich and powerful. This ultimately demonstrates that each archive can tell a powerful story and each story can have varying impact depending on the historian’s interpretation.
Question: How are historians able to draw this line between history and fiction when the lines are so blurred? Does each story require a lengthy process or does each process become easier with experience?
“Words are not concepts and concepts are not words: between the two are the layers of theory accumulated throughout the ages” (Trouillot 4).
Even if we are acknowledging our biases and attempting to separate ourselves from them, as Trouillot suggests in the introduction, this quote suggests one way we may forget we are biased is in our understanding of language. When we are looking at a source, we may think that certain words or phrases have certain connotations, and therefore determine a certain emotionality or lack thereof for that item. But we must remember the connotations of the time period we are living in in comparison to that which we are researching, a notion becoming more and more common in popular history.
It makes me think of the thousands of translations of the Bible. NIV, Grail Pslams (used by the Catholic Church), King James, the list goes on and on. But the 1 billion people who align themselves with some part of Christianity can’t agree on one version of the text to declare as the universal truth, although some of those people declare the Bible as the Truth, as it is written, with no room for interpretation. I am curious the layers of theory that go into deciding how to translate a text, especially from ancient languages when connotation of words might be incredibly wide-range or simply assumed rather than known. It makes me think of later in the piece as well, when Trouillot brings up the idea of narratives that reach popular history so they becoming undoubted, simply accepted as significant even if not entirely true (and the dangerous rabbit hole this puts us down as historians). I bring this up to point out that whose words we look at and study, whose words we translate and put into context is relevant to whose histories we are telling. And the Bible feels all the more relevant in that example. Of course it has been translated thousands of times, again and again, searching for some kernel of newness or truth, because Christianity holds so much power, a peoples whose history we tell often.
My question is this: how do we, especially as amateur historians, put ourselves in the concepts and words of the time, separating ourselves from the theory of the age we live in? What resources are most useful? Should we, even, separate ourselves? Have those theories been accumulated for a reason?
Francis Blouin and William Rosenberg, Processing the Past: Contesting Authority in History and the Archives, Introduction: “On the Intersections of Archives and History,” pp.3-10
“The scholar comes with questions to a place of imagined and unexpected possibilities, the archivist usually ready and willing to help. Things begin routinely, perhaps by storing a backpack, signing in, and finding a comfortable place in the reading room. The scholar meets the archivist; the scholar’s questions meet the resources of the archives and the experience and understanding of the archivist” (Boulin, 4).
The introduction drew my attention with an account of a scholar conducting and encountering work in an archive. It made me wonder, what are the expectations of the historian, and how do they interact with the material presented by the archivist? Francis Blouin uncovers this transaction between archivists and historians: “The historian uses the materials to process historical information and understanding; the archivist processes the materials to allow this information and understanding to be “uncovered.” This processing takes place at many levels and on the basis of a variety of professional and conceptual assumptions” (Blouin, 4).
This introduction also made me reconsider the difference between special collections and archives. Francis Blouin and William Rosenberg reference special collections within larger library establishments to say, “We are not considering the library or the museum as archives (that is collections of catalogued books and collections and displays of artifacts), or archives that are sometimes conceptualized practically or metaphorically in complex ways in the psychological and electronic worlds, although we will occasionally bring some relevant connections into our discussion” (Blouin, 6). Does this mean the collection of old photographs and yearbooks in the Colby’s special collections are not an archive? Or is this just one institution the authors are not focusing on? They assert their goal is to study the changing relationship between historians and archivists, and I believe it would be fascinating to study that within the context of a college or university.
Quote: “…archival practice perpetuates the central professional myth of the past century that the archivist is (or should strive to be) an objective, neutral, passive (if not impotent, then self-restrained) keeper of truth” (Schwartz and Cook, 5).
Comment: The “myth” of “an objective, neutral, passive…keeper of truth” gives archivists and their archives historical authority, the idea that the archives are representative of, if not are, what happened, and so comprise the entire story. Schwartz and Cook urge for archivists to recognize that this myth truly is mythical, and they do this because the myth is also, as they point out, “misleading at best and dangerous at worst”(2). The authority of the archivists, imparted by institutions and their own projected image, automatically makes them and the histories they sponsor correct and unquestionable in their correctness. Archivists need to recognize the biases at work in their archives, both the biases of the historical artifact and of themselves. No person can look at something without a position, a point of view, as no one is without their own position or identity.
Questions: How should archivists, and historians, go about archival work and research? Is it enough to recognize absolute objectivity as a myth? What does that recognition look like (written acknowledgements of that fact, dismantlement of the pure archivist/historian image)? Should we acknowledge absolute objectivity as impossible but continue to pursue it anyway? Where does this leave further investigation—perhaps it is, as Schwartz and Cook discuss, a matter of switching lenses: going from focusing on what is there as the representation of reality, to focusing on what is not there and why what is there is there, and why what is not there not there.
On another point of thinking about scholarly image, we as students are often/always instructed to not use first person (indeed, I felt a squirming sensation in my gut just writing “we,” and reading the switch of first person is always jarring). Explanations for this center around tone, its professionalism and authority, and the idea that it is already implied that you are thinking/believing whatever you’re saying, so first-person would be redundant. Either we are assuming that the reader is reading with awareness of our analytical imperfections and biases as a human, or we are (for argumentative advantage) hoping that the reader takes the more-objective (not first person) voice as implying absolute fact. Would changing the way that we write be a way to recognize absolute objectivity as a myth?
“Tenets of that vision of history still inform the public’s sense of history in most of Europe and North America: the role of the historian is to reveal the past, to discover ornate least approximate the truth. Within that viewpoint, power is unproblematic, irrelevant to the construction of the narrative as such.”
The explanation of applied positivist thinking is considered to be always telling the story of the winner in history. This is the historical trend that apparently has been transcribed into Western history. The cause of this is most likely because, in the past few centuries, countries from the West have stood as hegemons. Those who have “won” in a historical context are of course prone to writing their own history in that way. Therefore, I do not find it surprising that Europe and North America have adopted positivist tactics when recalling history. But power in a historical context is objectively not unproblematic. The stories that are not shared, the ones of the “losers” bear significant history as well.
Question: Considering this, can positivist theory be taken seriously on an unbiased, historical scale?
Qoute: “Words are not concepts and concepts are not words: between the two are the layers of theory accumulated throughout the ages. But theories are built on words and with words. Thus it is not surprising that the ambiguity offered by the vernacular use of the word history has caught the attention of many thinkers since at least antiquity. What is suprising is the reluctance with which theories of history have dealt with this fundamental ambiguity.”
Comment: What I think I understood in this quote from Trouillot is that he is distinguishing between the vernacular use of the word history and the concept of history and trying to reveal that there are different layers of theory in between the word and the concept. Additionally I find his point that theory is also constructed through words very interesting because if theories are constructed through words, yet the concept of history and the word history are distinct, then there must be an inherent ambiguity between what a “true” concept of history is and what concept the word history conveys to us. He goes on to elaborate on this ambiguity and how various historical views try to resolve this inherent ambiguity.
Question: Is it important to find truth in history? Is it possible to ever have a “true” view/concept of history? How do archives bring us closer to finding a true view of history.
Trouillot:
“Sunday afternoon was a ritual time for the Trouillot brothers. History was their alibi for expressing both their love and disagreements”
“Human beings participate in history both as actors and as narrators. […] History means both the facts of the matter and the narrative of those facts, both ‘what happened’ and ‘that which is said to have happened”
History, and thus archives, are inevitably biased. A product of human bias, historical documents are all on a spectrum of absolute truth to completely false. Even between two brothers with a passion for their national history, disagreements are found and delved into. This is an example of how even individuals who think in similar fashions can have disputed accounts of the past. The problem with archival validity arises as individuals are tasked with recording an event through a single perception. Yes, there must be a humanistic, perhaps story telling fashion approach to recording history. However, allowing a homogenous sample of individuals to dictate how any given event will be remembered provides ample potential for bias and thus untruthfulness on how different events, cultures, or data will be remembered.
Question: Is there any quantitative process for determining the validity of a given set of archives or individual record? Or would the lack of documents from those who did not write history make this effort useless?
Hey, I thought it was really interesting to bring up how individuals, and even closely related ones at that, are going to experience the world in different ways. In response to your question, I think it’s less important to try and determine the truth as the beginning and end of a historical argument, but rather, deciding why and to whom a certain account of event is valid. I struggle to feel like we can discount some accounts as “invalid” just because they aren’t factually correct, because clearly someone felt they were true or thought the events should be purported as such. In the case of archives and what is left there, I think it’s really important for us as scholars to do even more background research to decide what context caused counter-factual accounts of events or situations to gain traction or the semblance and reputation of truth.
Dear Students, Here’s a sample of a quote, comment, question discussion post:
Quote: “This book is about history and power. It deals with the many ways in which the production of historical narratives involves the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals who have unequal access to the means for such production…” (Trouillot, xxiii)
Comment: Trouillot shows that historical narratives are not neutral or objective, but that some groups have had more power to construct those histories and tell stories about the past. It was compelling to think about “how history works,” how it is produced, and who are the actors who build the historical narratives we hear, both inside and outside of academia (politicians, filmmakers, curators, authors, etc.). Some of this power to produce history lies in the archive—in assembly and retrieval of documents by archivists, in selecting and shaping the knowledge that we preserve and remember. Schwartz and Cook point out that it’s important to acknowledge the power in the archive, and Blouin and Rosenberg want to bridge the ‘archival divide’ between scholars and archivists.
Question: Could bridging the work of historians and archivists reveal some of these silences and inequalities in archives and in history? And what did Trouillot mean by the “two sides of historicity”?
Post by 10:00am tomorrow (Tuesday, January 9). And don’t forget to read and respond to your classmates’ posts before class!
Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook write: “If we so inquire into the function of archives in society, then we must deal with two intimately related, but separately conceived themes: ‘knowledge and the shaping of archives’ and ‘archives and the shaping of knowledge.’ Imbricated in these themes is the exercise of power – power over information and power of information institutions” (9)
I am intrigued by the article’s distinction between “knowledge and the shaping of archives” and “archives and the shaping of knowledge.” It seems to get at something deceivingly simple: what we know shapes what we remember, and what we remember shapes what we’ll later know. Working to understand what lies in a particular archival collection must entail an investigation not only of what exists within the collection but also what scholars–present and future–might take from it and how it shapes their work. With this, it becomes clear that knowledge is power. Knowledge is power when you possess the information, and knowledge is power when you use the information. This point within the article demonstrates the multifaceted approach that it seems must be taken in order to accurately make use of an archive.
The phrases “shaping of the archives” and “shaping of knowledge” seem to me to reach into the future. How should historians balance the historical nature of that which lies in the archive with the future-oriented nature of how archival material/collections might be construed in years to come?
“Some scholars claim that the fantasy has reached such significance for the West that it matters little whether it is based on facts. Does this mean the line between history and fiction is useless?” (Trouillot 8-9)
I found the effect that language has on history and the description of events by generations extremely interesting. It seems pretty problematic to say that just because other cultures did not share Western grammatical structures or the same access to technology that their history and heritage should be discredited. As mentioned in the text, there are stories that have been told so many time that eventually the validity does not matter. I must believe that much of what we consider today to be authentic historical accounts were influenced by individual’s bias, perceptions, and even their realities that differ from others who experienced or studied the exact same thing. If we see history as essentially storytelling, what is the significance of the truth when looking at historical events? Especially before the days of technology that can capture the true events of a moment, is it not individual’s perceptions of the events that characterize the events themselves. Ideally you would have available both personal accounts and the undisputable course of events, to juxtapose and paint a picture of not only what happened but how it felt. Are there any circumstances you can think of where perceptions may be more important than actual events?
In response to your question, which I think is an important question, I can think of a circumstance where the perception is more important than the actual event. For me this question makes me think of the Americas prior to 1492. Today there is solid evidence that the peoples of the Americas before the Europeans arrived were a advanced society. For example, the Inca, who lived in the Andes, had a very centralized/ advanced society that was capable of basically ordering its populace to build roads that baffle us today. However, regardless of these facts the perception that the Americas was filled with backwards peoples before the Europeans arrived prevails. Amazingly this perception has endured over the solid historically facts that prove it false. I have to chalk this perception prevailing over the facts because the perception is linked to a political motive/ ideology.
The distinction between “perceptions” and “actual events” that you bring up is really intriguing. Throughout these readings, I’ve been wondering if it ever really is possible to fully capture a historical event. Anything from the past that continues to be preserved is going to have the marks of the people/person who preserves it. Even with today’s technologies, I still don’t know if people can really capture an event as a whole–even with film there are different decisions being made about how to film (like the decisions that cinematographers make in filming movies) and even when footage is taken by someone who has just grabbed a camera, everything is still being seen, quite literally, from their lens. Newer technologies may bring new problems. Again going with the idea of film as a way to capture an event, the film itself may not be true (not to get into these debates, but think of UFO, Big Foot, or Loch Ness Monster photos). Ultimately everything we see is just what we perceive. Perceiving things that other people have perceived (as we do in history courses) makes another degree of separation from the event itself.
“Archives have always been about power, wether it is the power of the state, the church, the corporation, the family, the public, or the individual.” (Schwartz & Cook, 13)
The notion that archives, or more importantly the stories they can tell, generate power is fascinating. Its fascinating because power is usually thought of as force or ability to change something . Force, in the political sense, is usually the product the military. After all, it is military force that changes governments or conquerors new land.
However, as this quote illustrates, the force behind the military force is the story. Without the story, which is preserved/ fostered in the archives, there would be no motivation. The story is the most central element to mobilizing any force. For example, during World War II propaganda, which is a form of story, motivated men to fight. On the German side propaganda was distributed that painted the Russians as less than or sub human. That way the German solider would have no problem invading Russia and fighting. Without propaganda it would be next to impossible to mobilize anybody to fight.
The power of the story is not just limited to to global conflicts, but is relevant to own our everyday choices. After all, why did we all choose to go to Colby? I think it has a lot to do with story/ narrative we’ve been told.
My question is- what is the best way to resist the power of the archives/ the stories that come with?
I honed in on the use of power in this reading as well and I really thought your link to World War II propaganda was interesting. In response to your question, I think the best way to ‘resist the power of the archives’ is to, ironically, embrace all they have to offer. By taking into account all points of view of a given event, you’re able to develop a more whole representation of what really happened with less bias. This would, however, be impossible if archives were completely under control of a dominant force that restricted access to varying interpretations.
I think the “best way to resist the power of the archives/stories that come with”, as you said, is broadening access to information and promoting unbias education. The broader your source of information, the more information you have to formulate your own beliefs. Additionally, education is key to develop your skills to broaden your access to information and process that information. Hopefully, that would lead to a greater ability for a person to reject propaganda.
“Archives have always been about power, whether it is the power of the state, the church, the corporation, the family, the public, or the individual. Archives have the power to privilege and to marginalize. They can be a tool of hegemony; they can be a tool of resistance. They both reflect and constitute power relations. They are a product of society’s need for information, and the abundance and circulation of documents reflects the importance placed on information in society.” (Schwartz and Cook, p.13)
The conversation that Cook and Schwartz crafted about archives and their societal impact really stood out to me. Among their main talking points was power (as referenced in the title). The text begins by emphasizing the lack of power among archivists as viewed by the outside world, practically labeling them as simpletons. This position evolves though as the aspect of memory is introduced and linked to archives. It’s argued the contents of archives serve as evidence for our conceptions of historical events and phenomenons. With this in mind, it becomes clear that control of archives is control of public memory and therefore a very powerful institution.
Is the assertion that the archive is inherently powerful completely correct? Couldn’t you argue that the power comes from archivists and dominant cultures to control the archives?
“The historian begins to process the vestiges of the past into some new form of understanding, rarely giving any thought to the fact that the “vestiges” themselves—letters, memos, reports, all sorts of documents—have already been processed by archivists into what the scholar will hopefully think are interesting materials. The historian uses the materials to process historical information and understanding; the archivist processes the materials to allow this information and understanding to be ‘uncovered.’” (Bluin and Rosenberg 2)
While doing the reading, I found it to be compelling that there is a greater narrative of power in the archives, but something I find crucial to keep in mind is that there are decisions on the level of the individual, as well, and not all of them might be done with malicious intent or with the implicit purpose of concealing the histories of minorities and other marginalized groups. By the time we have access to an archive, there have already been large-scale decisions made to form and shape the collection, but also smaller decisions. Some of the pieces for Tuesday alluded to the fact that the researcher in a way depends on the archivist to find certain materials, and may depend on the archivist again to find related items. Processing information that this level will undoubtedly lead to gaps in knowledge or information, and to me, it is without malicious intent.
Along those same lines, I find I have some trouble reconciling where the line between power plays and general misfortune falls. As someone who focuses primarily on medieval history, I feel like I constantly face the fact that not much survives, and we have a finite amount of resources to study that period. Although I am sure a lot of preservation happened because certain groups had no power to create anything that could be preserved, and because groups in power decided some work was not worth preserving, I am struck by how many gaps there appear to be even in that body of work. We may only have seven letters of a correspondence that we know went on for years. Is this lack nefarious in 2018? I think it bears keeping in mind that there is a possibility for preservational mischief, but I guess now it just seems like windows in narratives is something we just have to take for granted.
To what extent can narratives be whole if we know there are either intentional or unintentional gaps in our bodies of literature and other documents? What place should an examination of the gaps in the archives have in our work?
Quote: “The problems of determining what belongs to the past multiply tenfold when the past is said to be collective” (Trouillot, 16).
Comment: Trouillot demonstrates the history is an imprecise practice in which historians often treat groups of people as monolithic. For example, historians will often mention things like the role of women or people of color during certain times in certain places. In a way, this theoretical framework dehumanizes the individual participants in history who each experience their own unique circumstances. Therefore, historians must make careful choices in how they communicate the history of groups of people. The way that people are grouped in contemporary historical academia is as much a reflection of modern society as it is a reflection of the past.
Question: Written documents are much easier to archive than orally-transmitted history. What methods—if any—do archivists use to preserve oral history?
Quote:
“English, of course, has no…grammatical rule assessing evidence.” (Trouillot, pg. 7)
Comment:
In this line (from which I omitted the word “such” for the sake of quotation), Trouillot reflects on the ability of certain languages’ grammatical structures to convey the verifiability of information as it pertains to the source of evidence. For instance, Tuyaca is a language endemic to Northwestern Brazil that uses grammatical evidentiality. In Tuyaca, a speaker would add either a suffix or a prefix (I forget which one) to a sentences’ primary verb so as to indicate how the information conveyed in that sentence was gathered or presented.
English speakers (and, for that matter, speakers of essentially all Indo-European languages) mainly use auxiliary verbs (e.g., he is a fast runner; he looks like a fast runner; she said that he is a fast runner; I think that he is a fast runner; I know that he is a fast runner) to tell others about how we know the ostensible truth behind what we say. The problem, obviously, is that these auxiliary verbs are not grammatically necessary. The Tuyaca equivalent of these auxiliary verbs, the aforementioned prefixes/suffixes, are generally mandatory. A speaker of Tuyaca would not say, “he is a fast runner.” He or she would be grammatically obligated to be more specific: Is there observable evidence that he runs quickly? Do you merely think that he runs quickly? Have you been told that he runs quickly?
The problem that Trouillot outlines stems from the fact that, unfortunately, fairly few professional historians and archivists speak evidentiary languages. A great deal of academia is conducted in romance languages, speakers of which are almost never obligated to specify the basis for their claim. This gives rise to the theory that day-to-day communication in Tuyaca is better informed than day-to-day communication in English due to the impossibility of omitting information in the former language. This obviously influences historiography greatly: A Tuyacan historiographer would be almost inherently more informative than a European historiographer by mere virtue of utilizing language that mandates a higher degree of specificity.
Question: Would there be any way to look into how texts written in evidentiary languages (if there are any) may be easier to corroborate and contextualize than texts written in Indo-European languages?
Hi Jonathan, I really like the point you make here. It is intriguing how Trouillot bring up this point of the differing grammatical structures of languages and their differing difficulties. If a specified evidentiary language is understood by a historian, then it would be easier to contextualize given that it is impossible to omit information in a more informative language. It would be interesting to see if there are any documented studies of historians who have come to at least a basic level of understanding of an evidentiary language in which this is the case.
Quote:
“Taken together, the on-going denial by archivists of their power over memory, the failure to explore the many factors that profoundly affect records before they come to the archives, and the continued assumptions by many users of archives that the records presented to them are not problematic, represent a prescription for sterility on both sides of the reference room desk.” (Schwartz & Cook, 2)
Comment:
Schwartz & Cook show several major flaws over how records are collected and referenced. In order to create a better archival system archivists must admit that they have substantial power over how an event will be interpreted. Although they may do their best to collect unbiased facts their own opinions will still influence what is collected and what is not. Records that do come to an archive may not be as reliable or neutral as they are presided. As many say “History is written by the victors.” To me this was really a wakeup call that we have grown up believing archives to be true, however we must learn to question not only articles from archives but the means by which they were collected and the archives themselves. It is the responsibility of both archivists and researchers to discern how credible a source is even if it is in an archive.
Question:
Why is there an “on-going denial by archivists of their power over memory,” if archives have always been related to power?
I’m interested in what you point out about the “on-going denial by archivists of their power over memory.” It makes me wonder: who do the archivists report to? Certainly everyone has a “boss” who sets their goals, the purpose of their work, and more. Is it really the archivists who have the power over memory? Or is it the institution of the archive itself and those who oversee it?
Quote: “The need for a different kind of credibility sets the historical narrative apart from fiction. This need is both contingent and necessary. It is contingent inasmuch as some narratives go back and forth over the line between fiction and history, while others occupy an undefined position that seems to deny the very existence of a line.” (Trouillot 8).
Trouillot argues that distinguishing the difference between fact and history is a difficult task due to the fact that historians are sometimes not able to see a story from multiple perspectives that would result in clarification. Historians have to be able to perform this important task in order to give a representation of the most accurate history; however, this cannot be defined as a “one size fits all” process. In each case, there is a wide range of information and types of information to pool from that a historian has to interpret and diagnose. Trouillot applies this thinking to the history of the Alamo in order to showcase how a cemetery for American Indians near the Alamo can possibly alter the full comprehensive history of the Alamo. This story surrounding the Indians begs the question of whether or not this was a true story of bravery, or if it was another story of the Indians losing their land to the more rich and powerful. This ultimately demonstrates that each archive can tell a powerful story and each story can have varying impact depending on the historian’s interpretation.
Question: How are historians able to draw this line between history and fiction when the lines are so blurred? Does each story require a lengthy process or does each process become easier with experience?
“Words are not concepts and concepts are not words: between the two are the layers of theory accumulated throughout the ages” (Trouillot 4).
Even if we are acknowledging our biases and attempting to separate ourselves from them, as Trouillot suggests in the introduction, this quote suggests one way we may forget we are biased is in our understanding of language. When we are looking at a source, we may think that certain words or phrases have certain connotations, and therefore determine a certain emotionality or lack thereof for that item. But we must remember the connotations of the time period we are living in in comparison to that which we are researching, a notion becoming more and more common in popular history.
It makes me think of the thousands of translations of the Bible. NIV, Grail Pslams (used by the Catholic Church), King James, the list goes on and on. But the 1 billion people who align themselves with some part of Christianity can’t agree on one version of the text to declare as the universal truth, although some of those people declare the Bible as the Truth, as it is written, with no room for interpretation. I am curious the layers of theory that go into deciding how to translate a text, especially from ancient languages when connotation of words might be incredibly wide-range or simply assumed rather than known. It makes me think of later in the piece as well, when Trouillot brings up the idea of narratives that reach popular history so they becoming undoubted, simply accepted as significant even if not entirely true (and the dangerous rabbit hole this puts us down as historians). I bring this up to point out that whose words we look at and study, whose words we translate and put into context is relevant to whose histories we are telling. And the Bible feels all the more relevant in that example. Of course it has been translated thousands of times, again and again, searching for some kernel of newness or truth, because Christianity holds so much power, a peoples whose history we tell often.
My question is this: how do we, especially as amateur historians, put ourselves in the concepts and words of the time, separating ourselves from the theory of the age we live in? What resources are most useful? Should we, even, separate ourselves? Have those theories been accumulated for a reason?
Francis Blouin and William Rosenberg, Processing the Past: Contesting Authority in History and the Archives, Introduction: “On the Intersections of Archives and History,” pp.3-10
“The scholar comes with questions to a place of imagined and unexpected possibilities, the archivist usually ready and willing to help. Things begin routinely, perhaps by storing a backpack, signing in, and finding a comfortable place in the reading room. The scholar meets the archivist; the scholar’s questions meet the resources of the archives and the experience and understanding of the archivist” (Boulin, 4).
The introduction drew my attention with an account of a scholar conducting and encountering work in an archive. It made me wonder, what are the expectations of the historian, and how do they interact with the material presented by the archivist? Francis Blouin uncovers this transaction between archivists and historians: “The historian uses the materials to process historical information and understanding; the archivist processes the materials to allow this information and understanding to be “uncovered.” This processing takes place at many levels and on the basis of a variety of professional and conceptual assumptions” (Blouin, 4).
This introduction also made me reconsider the difference between special collections and archives. Francis Blouin and William Rosenberg reference special collections within larger library establishments to say, “We are not considering the library or the museum as archives (that is collections of catalogued books and collections and displays of artifacts), or archives that are sometimes conceptualized practically or metaphorically in complex ways in the psychological and electronic worlds, although we will occasionally bring some relevant connections into our discussion” (Blouin, 6). Does this mean the collection of old photographs and yearbooks in the Colby’s special collections are not an archive? Or is this just one institution the authors are not focusing on? They assert their goal is to study the changing relationship between historians and archivists, and I believe it would be fascinating to study that within the context of a college or university.
Quote: “…archival practice perpetuates the central professional myth of the past century that the archivist is (or should strive to be) an objective, neutral, passive (if not impotent, then self-restrained) keeper of truth” (Schwartz and Cook, 5).
Comment: The “myth” of “an objective, neutral, passive…keeper of truth” gives archivists and their archives historical authority, the idea that the archives are representative of, if not are, what happened, and so comprise the entire story. Schwartz and Cook urge for archivists to recognize that this myth truly is mythical, and they do this because the myth is also, as they point out, “misleading at best and dangerous at worst”(2). The authority of the archivists, imparted by institutions and their own projected image, automatically makes them and the histories they sponsor correct and unquestionable in their correctness. Archivists need to recognize the biases at work in their archives, both the biases of the historical artifact and of themselves. No person can look at something without a position, a point of view, as no one is without their own position or identity.
Questions: How should archivists, and historians, go about archival work and research? Is it enough to recognize absolute objectivity as a myth? What does that recognition look like (written acknowledgements of that fact, dismantlement of the pure archivist/historian image)? Should we acknowledge absolute objectivity as impossible but continue to pursue it anyway? Where does this leave further investigation—perhaps it is, as Schwartz and Cook discuss, a matter of switching lenses: going from focusing on what is there as the representation of reality, to focusing on what is not there and why what is there is there, and why what is not there not there.
On another point of thinking about scholarly image, we as students are often/always instructed to not use first person (indeed, I felt a squirming sensation in my gut just writing “we,” and reading the switch of first person is always jarring). Explanations for this center around tone, its professionalism and authority, and the idea that it is already implied that you are thinking/believing whatever you’re saying, so first-person would be redundant. Either we are assuming that the reader is reading with awareness of our analytical imperfections and biases as a human, or we are (for argumentative advantage) hoping that the reader takes the more-objective (not first person) voice as implying absolute fact. Would changing the way that we write be a way to recognize absolute objectivity as a myth?
“Tenets of that vision of history still inform the public’s sense of history in most of Europe and North America: the role of the historian is to reveal the past, to discover ornate least approximate the truth. Within that viewpoint, power is unproblematic, irrelevant to the construction of the narrative as such.”
The explanation of applied positivist thinking is considered to be always telling the story of the winner in history. This is the historical trend that apparently has been transcribed into Western history. The cause of this is most likely because, in the past few centuries, countries from the West have stood as hegemons. Those who have “won” in a historical context are of course prone to writing their own history in that way. Therefore, I do not find it surprising that Europe and North America have adopted positivist tactics when recalling history. But power in a historical context is objectively not unproblematic. The stories that are not shared, the ones of the “losers” bear significant history as well.
Question: Considering this, can positivist theory be taken seriously on an unbiased, historical scale?
Qoute: “Words are not concepts and concepts are not words: between the two are the layers of theory accumulated throughout the ages. But theories are built on words and with words. Thus it is not surprising that the ambiguity offered by the vernacular use of the word history has caught the attention of many thinkers since at least antiquity. What is suprising is the reluctance with which theories of history have dealt with this fundamental ambiguity.”
Comment: What I think I understood in this quote from Trouillot is that he is distinguishing between the vernacular use of the word history and the concept of history and trying to reveal that there are different layers of theory in between the word and the concept. Additionally I find his point that theory is also constructed through words very interesting because if theories are constructed through words, yet the concept of history and the word history are distinct, then there must be an inherent ambiguity between what a “true” concept of history is and what concept the word history conveys to us. He goes on to elaborate on this ambiguity and how various historical views try to resolve this inherent ambiguity.
Question: Is it important to find truth in history? Is it possible to ever have a “true” view/concept of history? How do archives bring us closer to finding a true view of history.